The thing was released into the public domain! No reason at all to take it down - they could have left the last published version up with a giant banner at the top saying it's no longer maintained.
> Finally, only CIA insiders would know that officers donated some of their personal travel photos to The World Factbook, which hosted more than 5,000 photographs that were copyright-free for anyone to access and use.
Isn’t this sufficient to keep it around, even if the facts themselves may be available on Wikipedia?
Huh. I had a native Android app way back when on the Play Store, that presented the Factbook in the mobile-friendly manner. Was quite popular in Africa of all places. But ultimately had to first delist it and then close the account altogether, once Google started requiring more and more unnecessary SDK updates, and ultimately identity verification. What a trip down the memory lane.
I remember doing research in the print version of the World Factbook back in college days. It was the most accurate and up-to-date info we could get on countries before the Interwebs. RIP.
Also, it was paid for by US taxpayer dollars - the entire content should have been released somewhere for free, maybe even someone would have started up a new project to maintain it, for example, something under Wikimedia or some other nonprofit.
This wholesale elimination of valuable information and data owned by the public is so incredibly sad and damaging to our future.
Maybe we need a FOIA request to get the entire contents released to the public.
It was available for online browsing or as a downloadable file, I think a zip compressed PDF. I’m sure copies are available, but it would be nice to have an authoritative source.
The factbook was much more a tool for propaganda than anything else. While you could trust most of the numbers, you shouldn’t expect it to be fair about any socialist or communist countries, usually classified as brutal dictatorships, while it would always be exceedingly kind to countries with US sponsored dictators.
Has it though? Isn't one of the concerns of information on the internet (regardless of political affiliation) that a lot of it is total bullshit?
I've seen so many responses from AI and AI "Summaries" that source claims from 20 year old unsourced forum posts. For that matter, people just make shit up, all the time, often for no apparent reason. It's upsetting that it took me until my 30's to realize that, but regardless I think there is value in canonical, well-funded sources, even with the internet.
It was. You were able to access a copy on the internet. It was neither edited nor published there. As such it simply couldn't compete with resources that are.
The existence of secondary sources doesn't reduce the need for primary sources. Before something can be published everywhere, it has to be published somewhere.
The CIA was a secondary source. This bulk of this material is all drawn from other publications. Which you can now access in ways you could not before.
Back in the peak-paper days - when the Sunday newspaper was for the man "smart enough to read it and strong enough to carry it", and the Computer Shopper magazine vied with phone directories for thickness - you could go into a gas station and pick up a paperback copy of the CIA World Factbook, usually from a shelf also sporting the Rand McNally road maps.
Hmmm. They do not mention Wikipedia, but the CIA book kind of had information about countries for a very long time. I get that Wikipedia would objectively make more sense; so while it may make sense to stop investing resources into the CIA book, I still think it would be better to keep tabs on the content of Wikipedia. Kind of like a secondary quality control. It may not be hugely important here, but if 100.000 other websites vanish, I still think it may be an indirect problem for Wikipedia, as all its presented facts may become increasingly more and more circular to itself - which is made worse by AI slop spamming down the global quality.
As it stands you only need a few friends or likeminded journalists at a few major publications to repeat the same falsehood, and it becomes a properly cited fact on Wikipedia and in the public eye for as long as you need it to be. If it’s later proven to be a falsehood and the underlying sources quietly issue retractions it doesn’t matter.
How many people out there still believe the Hunter Biden laptop story, and all the politically damaging material on it was Russian misinformation?
I don't know that the Schlesinger memo was real but I think it's conclusions were perfect. The CIA needs to be split into two divisions. The research division and the operations division.
Well - the easier take-away is that the general public can not trust any of those top organisations. I think when a citizen can not trust the government anymore (in any country, at the least in a democracy), this is worrying. It's then more like the novel 1984 - while that referred primarily to the Soviet Union (Big Brother referred to Stalin for the most part), one could also find so many correlations to a "strong man"-led democracy too.
> This quote, often phrased as "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false," is widely attributed to William J. Casey, who served as the Director of Central Intelligence (CIA) under President Ronald Reagan from 1981 to 1987.
> While frequently cited in literature and discussions about propaganda and media manipulation, the quote's authenticity is highly disputed and unverified.
Urgh, this is nasty:
They didn't even have the decency to give it a 410 or 404 error.Same for all of the country pages - they redirect back to the same story: https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/morocco/
The thing was released into the public domain! No reason at all to take it down - they could have left the last published version up with a giant banner at the top saying it's no longer maintained.
Thank you Internet Archive - https://web.archive.org/web/20260103000011/https://www.cia.g...
> Finally, only CIA insiders would know that officers donated some of their personal travel photos to The World Factbook, which hosted more than 5,000 photographs that were copyright-free for anyone to access and use.
Isn’t this sufficient to keep it around, even if the facts themselves may be available on Wikipedia?
This isn't ideal but the book is still in print:
https://www.amazon.com/CIA-World-Factbook-2025-2026/dp/15107...
I couldn't find a PDF or archive of the site online (other than the obvious archive.org) but I didn't look very hard.
Huh. I had a native Android app way back when on the Play Store, that presented the Factbook in the mobile-friendly manner. Was quite popular in Africa of all places. But ultimately had to first delist it and then close the account altogether, once Google started requiring more and more unnecessary SDK updates, and ultimately identity verification. What a trip down the memory lane.
I remember doing research in the print version of the World Factbook back in college days. It was the most accurate and up-to-date info we could get on countries before the Interwebs. RIP.
Waaaht? And, why? Budgets? This is/was a wonderful resource. I'll be sad to see the back of it.
The why is a good question. I don't think it is the budget; to me it seems more as if Wikipedia kind of phased it out.
why in the world is this being sunset i wonder
I concur.
Also, it was paid for by US taxpayer dollars - the entire content should have been released somewhere for free, maybe even someone would have started up a new project to maintain it, for example, something under Wikimedia or some other nonprofit.
This wholesale elimination of valuable information and data owned by the public is so incredibly sad and damaging to our future.
Maybe we need a FOIA request to get the entire contents released to the public.
It seems to be archived on the wayback machine, for example https://web.archive.org/web/20260203163430/https://www.cia.g...
It was available for online browsing or as a downloadable file, I think a zip compressed PDF. I’m sure copies are available, but it would be nice to have an authoritative source.
Agreed. Though perhaps they will open source some stuff. What would interest me is HOW they got the information they showed.
> Maybe we need a FOIA request to get the entire contents released to the public.
That’s a sound idea.
Facts are not a thing the government is interested in now
Nor is soft power.
The factbook was much more a tool for propaganda than anything else. While you could trust most of the numbers, you shouldn’t expect it to be fair about any socialist or communist countries, usually classified as brutal dictatorships, while it would always be exceedingly kind to countries with US sponsored dictators.
While that is true, the current government makes heavy use of propaganda too.
I'd be interested to see concrete examples of this, if they exist.
by "this"... that the current US govt isn't interested in soft power?
I would also like to see a comparison to prove the point.
Yep. This seems somewhat similar in motivation to the cuts to USAID.
The internet now exists and easily surpasses the value of this static publication.
The World Factbook was a really useful resource on the internet.
Has it though? Isn't one of the concerns of information on the internet (regardless of political affiliation) that a lot of it is total bullshit?
I've seen so many responses from AI and AI "Summaries" that source claims from 20 year old unsourced forum posts. For that matter, people just make shit up, all the time, often for no apparent reason. It's upsetting that it took me until my 30's to realize that, but regardless I think there is value in canonical, well-funded sources, even with the internet.
I think the quality of internet content depends on where you lurk and contribute.
This is an odd thing to say for something heavily used on the internet. It was not just a physical book.
> It was not just a physical book.
It was. You were able to access a copy on the internet. It was neither edited nor published there. As such it simply couldn't compete with resources that are.
Incorrect. The website was updated weekly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Factbook#Frequency_o...
What is this then: https://web.archive.org/web/20260203163430/https://www.cia.g...
It clearly states on the page that the Factbook was continuously updated, with "new data uploaded this week".
The existence of secondary sources doesn't reduce the need for primary sources. Before something can be published everywhere, it has to be published somewhere.
The CIA was a secondary source. This bulk of this material is all drawn from other publications. Which you can now access in ways you could not before.
Not if everything is made up on the spot for clicks and views, which is where we're heading.
Back in the peak-paper days - when the Sunday newspaper was for the man "smart enough to read it and strong enough to carry it", and the Computer Shopper magazine vied with phone directories for thickness - you could go into a gas station and pick up a paperback copy of the CIA World Factbook, usually from a shelf also sporting the Rand McNally road maps.
Tears in rain, sic transit, etc.
Ah, was just finishing a geography quiz game with this as one of the fact sources. Oh well!
Hmmm. They do not mention Wikipedia, but the CIA book kind of had information about countries for a very long time. I get that Wikipedia would objectively make more sense; so while it may make sense to stop investing resources into the CIA book, I still think it would be better to keep tabs on the content of Wikipedia. Kind of like a secondary quality control. It may not be hugely important here, but if 100.000 other websites vanish, I still think it may be an indirect problem for Wikipedia, as all its presented facts may become increasingly more and more circular to itself - which is made worse by AI slop spamming down the global quality.
As it stands you only need a few friends or likeminded journalists at a few major publications to repeat the same falsehood, and it becomes a properly cited fact on Wikipedia and in the public eye for as long as you need it to be. If it’s later proven to be a falsehood and the underlying sources quietly issue retractions it doesn’t matter.
How many people out there still believe the Hunter Biden laptop story, and all the politically damaging material on it was Russian misinformation?
What is now a good source of aggregated population statistics?
At least they let the people behind it give a farewell message.
Most cuts to government are abrupt and unceremonious.
I don't know that the Schlesinger memo was real but I think it's conclusions were perfect. The CIA needs to be split into two divisions. The research division and the operations division.
They should all just go home. They already won. Remember this quote?
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." - William J. Casey, CIA Director (1981)
Well - the easier take-away is that the general public can not trust any of those top organisations. I think when a citizen can not trust the government anymore (in any country, at the least in a democracy), this is worrying. It's then more like the novel 1984 - while that referred primarily to the Soviet Union (Big Brother referred to Stalin for the most part), one could also find so many correlations to a "strong man"-led democracy too.
> This quote, often phrased as "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false," is widely attributed to William J. Casey, who served as the Director of Central Intelligence (CIA) under President Ronald Reagan from 1981 to 1987.
> While frequently cited in literature and discussions about propaganda and media manipulation, the quote's authenticity is highly disputed and unverified.
Are you trying to be ironic?
There Is No Disinformation Department.
Everyone should read 1984! It is such a time-less classic.
I see what you did there.